Michelin has been in the middle of MotoGP’s latest controversy, with Jorge Martin blaming the category’s tyre supplier for allegedly supplying him with a faulty tyre which, in the end, caused him major performance problems that led to a poor performance in yesterday’s race in Qatar, putting his title challenge at risk.
Faced with the Pramac rider’s criticism, Piero Taramasso – Michelin’s head of MotoGP – wasted no time in defending the French company: ‘This weekend the absolute record and also the record for the fastest lap of the race were broken on the last lap. This shows the consistent performance of the Michelin tyres. Not only was the track surface new, but a Grand Prix motorbike had never ridden on it before. It wasn’t possible to organise any pre-testing and the first test session, on a “green” track, was really like diving into the unknown’.
Taramasso then took aim at Martin, considering that what happened to the #89 was the only negative point of the weekend: ‘The only negative note was Jorge Martín’s performance. He complained about the rear tyre at the start and then also the front tyre, because he pushed too hard. We’re analysing the data because it’s not easy to say anything about the tyre at the moment. The tyre was manufactured in France and transported here directly, it was never preheated before’.
And he assured us that there would be news soon after analysing what happened: ‘He has no idea, he’s checking the data we’ve received from the team and, as soon as we have any news, we’ll let Jorge, Pramac and everyone know what happened’.